I’ve written multiple times about Donald Trump’s obsession with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and his authoritarian motivations to control the arts and culture institutions in this country. The president’s obsession is now threatening the country’s…
Robert Jeffress, apostate
Robert Jeffress, senior pastor at First Baptist Church of Dallas, is no stranger to controversy. He has denigrated Christian ethics by openly proclaiming political power as more important than personal character when choosing political candidates. Time and again he’s asked…
I was there on 9/11
Every year I’ve been on Facebook — for nearly 20 years — I’ve posted the same message on September 11: Every year on this day, I wake up remembering the clear blue sky. It was a perfect September day in…
Democratic Socialists are not Social Democrats
I read George Orwell’s Animal Farm in the ninth grade. I’ve been thinking a lot about the novella in recent weeks as candidates from the Democratic Socialists of America face more moderate Democrats in primary elections across the country. In…
A clergy call to preserve our democracy
The last time I was in Minneapolis, the city was under siege. In January, I came to Minneapolis on behalf of Baptist News Global. I arrived two weeks after Renée Nicole Good — a U.S. citizen and mother of three…
I’m a mother asking the court to block Texas’ Ten Commandments law
I am a Baptist pastor in Texas, the mother of an elementary-school child and one of the plaintiffs in Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District, a lawsuit challenging a Texas law (SB-10) that requires public schools to post the…
Don’t look away: ICE and CBP are getting away with murder
I grew up in a suburb of Dallas. I don’t know how many of my classmates were undocumented — we never thought to ask. It was the late 1980s and early ’90s, after all. A few years later, I was…
My first experience of Ryan Stollar was his cruel suicide note
Note: This article includes an explicit discussion of suicide and mental health issues. In the last 20 years, the words we use to talk about suicide have changed. We are chastised for saying that someone “committed suicide,” because in…
Who is the domestic terrorist?
In the wake of the violence of January 6, 2021, some observers wondered why the insurrectionists at the U.S. Capitol weren’t charged with domestic terrorism. The reason is simple: There is no standalone federal crime on the books for domestic…
City of Dallas-owned Love Field being used for ICE Air deportations
Several months ago, a coalition of clergy I am part of (CLEAR DFW) was instrumental in preventing the sale of an industrial warehouse to the Department of Homeland Security for the purposes of warehousing humans. We’ve known for some time…
Anti-Christian Bias report exalts Calvinism and lies as normative
It is no secret that Donald J. Trump is intent on exacting retribution on his perceived enemies. Top of his list is former President Joe Biden. While the recently released report by the Justice Department’s Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian…
Greg Abbott is on a campaign against religious liberty
One year ago, I wrote about how Texas Gov. Greg Abbott amplified a racist, Islamophobic tweet to further a conspiracy theory about a North Texas Muslim community. The conspiracy was that the planned community, EPIC City, was going to enact…